Lakers Austin Reaves Reflects on L.A.’s Third Straight Loss to the Memphis Grizzlies

The Lakers cannot seem to catch a break against these young teams.

The Lakers fell short for the third straight time this season to the Memphis Grizzlies on Sunday night. Going up against a young and rejuvenated team proved to put a lot of the Laker's weaknesses on display. One big weakness for L.A. is their defensive ability. With that said, rookie Austin Reaves spoke with the media after the game and briefly reflected on what went wrong, including not making stops. 

"They shot it really well," said Reaves.

"We weren't getting to their shooters as good as we needed to, but there were a lot of things. Like I said, it's just you chalk this one up to a bad loss and move forward." 

Reaves scored 16 points, had two assists and two steals, which was a good game for the rookie, but it wasn't enough. The Lakers still fell short 127-to-119 but had an impressive comeback considering they were down almost 30 points during the second half.  

Reaves continued and spoke about the positives from being able to make a comeback even though the Lakers still lost.  

"It's good to start playing a little better basketball towards the end in the fourth. We were just really moving and had good continuity on the offensive end and defensive end. We were talking through those situations, but it feels good I mean, I feel good playing. It sucks to lose but the fourth quarter was a postive we can look back at in film and kind of pick apart the things that we did good." 

It seemed that the Lakers were beginning to find solutions to their mistakes as they were finally on a winning streak, but that was not the case. Even with LeBron James scoring 35 points, the Lakers could not get the job done. Even though the Lakers were able to come back and make a close game, it did not matter because they could not stop the Grizzlies. Each time L.A. faces off against a high-scoring team, they fall to a deficit. 

The Lakers need to get better defensively if they want to have a chance to win another Championship.